Indigenous artist calls for whole truth in Australian history on Eve of Australia Day

“Australian History has too often been sentimentalised or ‘whited out’,“  Andrew Woodhouse, president of the Australian Heritage Institute said today. 

He was referring to pre-conceived notions he believes are often held by overseas visitors and young Australians that nothing much happened here before Captain Cook. 

“This ‘white-light conquering hero’ view of history is out of date and out of time: it’s past its use-by date,” he said.

“We need to realise that this country, the oldest, driest continent on earth has sustained the oldest continuous living civilisation on earth - our indigenous culture. Despite harsh conditions, Aboriginals used song lines to time-navigate vast distances, had cremation rituals for burials, used art as a language showing skeletal formations of animals explaining safe and unsafe parts to eat, have rich myths to explain the otherwise unexplainable, created returning boomerangs, and hunted and farmed fish successfully using weir traps for over 50,000 years.

“They did not have the three Rs as we know them today of reading, writing and ’rithmatic ,” Woodhouse said, “ but they had an understanding of their environment way beyond what we can possibly imagine, reading fine lines in the earth, for example, to track animal movements.

“Their “language” was their art,containing important messages” Woodhouse says, adding “this tradition continues in a series of oil paintings by Gordon Syron, who is giving a public talk about his controversial art on the Eve of Australia Day, Tuesday 25th January at 5pm at the Uniting Church, Chapel  by the Sea, Bondi Beach - details above .

Gordon Syron is descibed as the “Pioneer of Urban Aboriginal Art in Australia”,  and is the 2009 winner of the University of NSW College of Fine Art [COFA] award for the NSW Parliament House Prize and is to be an Adjunct Professor of Indigenous Art, UTS, later this year. He has been artist for 38years.

Syron's latest exhibition continues his satirical views of Australian history.

"I do not paint dots."

“I use art to send a message: it’s a visual message stick.,”

“For too long Australian history has not incorporated Indigenous Australian history,” Mr Syron said today.

“In NSW today there is little recognition by the new Premier, Kristina Keneally, of what being ‘Australian’ really means. It’s not based on a place of birth, as she well knows, coming from America, but is an attitude to people – all peoples – which she doesn’t seem to know.

“She is still working within an imperialist, colonial legal structure, based on an ‘us versus them’ mentality.

We need not just the truth but the whole truth about our nations' collective history," he said.

“And Ms Keneally is therefore complicit in the continuing degradation of Indigenous culture, issuing a second eviction notice for the National Syron collection containing over 400 Aboriginal artists," Syron says, calling on the NSW Government to purchase and fully conserve the Redfern  Keeping Place, containing National Archives, for future generations.

Andrew Woodhouse describes Mr Syron’s portrait of Ms Keneally in the current exhibition  – see attachment – as confronting and creatively cynical.

Ms Keneally is given her full name, Kristina Kerscher Keneally, in the portrait and her initials are highlighted - KKK. She is surrounded by white-hooded members of the notoriously American white-supremist racist group, the Klu Klux Klan, whose group shares the same initials.

"There is an implicit, perhaps even explicit, analogy suggested," Woodhouse observes.

Her wispy hair frames her open mouth. No words come out, suggesting perhaps some behind-the-scenes ventriloquism. And her fingers are pulling the strings of English red coats, whose first- fleet presence helped form the cradle of European permanent settlement 221 years ago next Tuesday, a clear reference to the continuing historical nexus between our past and the present.

Below the Redcoats, the Aboriginal population is portrayed as downtrodden and gaoled. The artwork, an oil painting on Belgian linen is for sale at $20,000, and is entiltled “We jail ‘em in NSW – KKK a portrait”; it deliberately and paradoxically uses the American spelling of gaol and highlights the continuing issue of Back Deaths In Custody.

Doors Open at 4:00PM

Chairperson will be Josephine Cashman, committee member & Indigenous lawyer of The Redfern Keeping Place and she will invite questions and audience participation.

Mr Syron will be speaking more about the meanings of the stories in the artworks-exhibition at the Chapel by the Sea, Monday, 25th January, Eve of Australia Day at 5PM, level 1, 95 Roscoe Street, Bondi Beach (just off Campbell Parade)

Doors open at 4PM. All welcome. Free entry!

Exhibition will be open on Australia Day Jan 26th from 3 to 6:00PM and Gordon will be there to talk to anyone who visits from 3 to 6:00PM.

Exhibition continues until Feb 4, 2010

See also www.smh.com.au/national/the-diary/artist-brushes-off-keneally-20100118-mgtg.html

[REDWatch is aware that the artwork and the description of it covered in this media release will be considered contentious by many. As with all media releases carried on the REDWatch website the views in this media release represent the views of the authors and its presence on the REDWatch website does not constitute any endorsement by REDWatch which carries a range of views on its website to inform the community about issues and what is being said about the community and its issues.]